The pandemic years haven’t been great for dealmaking. Our analysis of top 10 biopharma M&A transactions shows that after a blockbuster 2019, when the combined value of top 10 biopharma M&A transactions had hit US$ 207 billion, M&A activity decreased in the next two pandemic years, with the combined value of top 10 deals dropping to US$ 97 billion in 2020 and to US$ 53 billion in 2021.In 2022, the combined value of the top 10 M&A transactions reached US$ 69 billion. However, our analysis shows that total M&As increased only marginally — from US$ 93.6 billion in 2021 to US$ 98.7 billion in 2022. In fact, the total M&As by upfront cash dropped from US$ 77.6 billion to US$ 76.3 billion. Our data does not include deals in medical devices, diagnostics and animal health.Industry watchers had predicted 2022 to be the year of M&As, as Big Pharma were expected to spend the booty amassed during the pandemic on acquisitions. But record inflation, a looming recession, the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, volatile stock markets and some regulatory moves (such as the US Inflation Reduction Act) deterred companies from loosening their purse strings.The result was another
lackluster year for M&As. The top 10 M&A deals in 2022, selected based on upfront cash paid,
include Amgen’s Horizon takeover (US$ 27.8 billion), Pfizer’s purchase of Biohaven (US$ 11.6 billion) and Global Blood Therapeutics (US$ 5.4 billion), and BMS’ purchase of Turning Point Therapeutics (US$ 4.1 billion).View Top 100 Pharma & Biotech Deals in 2022 by Deal Size (Free Excel Available)Amgen buys Horizon in 2022’s biggest deal; picks up ChemoCentryx for US$ 3.7 bnThe year began on a sluggish note with M&A activity picking up in the second half. The biggest deal of the year — Amgen’s acquisition of Horizon Therapeutics — came in December.Last November, Horizon Therapeutics had said it
had drawn
buyout interest from players like Amgen, Sanofi and Johnson
& Johnson. Just weeks before Christmas, Amgen announced its US$ 27.8 billion takeover of Horizon. The Irish firm develops medicines for rare autoimmune and severe inflammatory diseases mostly sold in the US. Once complete, the deal will give Amgen access to Horizon’s two best-selling drugs – thyroid eye disease drug Tepezza and gout
treatment Krystexxa. Owing to the Amgen-Horizon deal, the rare
diseases therapeutic area attracted the highest amount of M&As (by deal
size). The second largest was neurology, with Pfizer taking over Biohaven and UCB
Pharma acquiring Zogenix.In August, Amgen had picked up Californian
biotech ChemoCentryx for US$ 3.7
billion to help broaden its portfolio of inflammation and kidney drugs. The deal brought ChemoCentryx’s potential blockbuster treatment for inflammatory disorders — Tavneos (avacopan) — into Amgen’s fold, along with three early-stage drug candidates that target ulcerative colitis, skin conditions and cancer.View Top 100 Pharma & Biotech Deals in 2022 by Deal Size (Free Excel Available) Pfizer acquires Biohaven for US$ 11.6 bn, Global Blood Therapeutics for
US$ 5.4 bnThe pandemic brought huge
revenue gains for Pfizer and the drug
behemoth decided to use the cash by cherry-picking companies that would
strengthen its portfolio. In May, Pfizer notched up New Haven-based Biohaven
Pharmaceuticals for US$ 11.6 billion. The deal gave
Pfizer the rights to Nurtec ODT, a leading oral migraine drug in the US and a potential blockbuster. Biohaven has six other migraine drugs in development and Pfizer expects them to top US$ 6 billion in annual sales. Biohaven is Pfizer’s largest purchase since 2016, when it bought Medivation for US$ 14 billion.Later in the year, Pfizer
acquired blood disorder drugmaker Global Blood Therapeutics (GBT) for US$ 5.4 billion with the intention of expanding its sickle cell disease portfolio. Through this buyout, Pfizer has added GBT’s approved drug, Oxbryta, along with two other sickle cell medicines – GBT601 and inclacumab (both in mid- to late-stage testing) – into its portfolio. Pfizer expects all these blood disorder drugs to contribute US$ 3 billion in peak sales.View Top 100 Pharma & Biotech Deals in 2022 by Deal Size (Free Excel Available) BMS buys Turning Point for its oncology pipeline; Takeda acquires Nimbus
LakshmiIn June, Bristol Myers Squibb acquired California-based drug developer Turning Point Therapeutics for an upfront
cash amount of US$ 4.1 billion to bolster its cancer drug pipeline. The deal gives BMS access to Turning Point’s star candidate, repotrectinib, in trials to treat non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) along with other advanced solid tumors. BMS expects repotrectinib to be approved in the US in the second half of 2023 and become a standard-of-care therapy for certain patients with NSCLC.In December, Takeda Pharmaceutical acquired US-based Nimbus
Lakshmi, a subsidiary of Nimbus Therapeutics that works
on TYK2 programs, for US$ 4 billion in upfront payment. Through the deal, Takeda won Nimbus’ experimental psoriasis drug TAK-279. Takeda will make two milestone payments of US$ 1 billion each to Nimbus if TAK-279 achieves annual net sales of US$ 4 billion and US$ 5 billion.View Top 100 Pharma & Biotech Deals in 2022 by Deal Size (Free Excel Available) GSK enters pneumococcal vaccine race with Affinivax deal; UCB buys ZogenixGSK – one of the world’s largest vaccine makers by sales – is set to compete for a share of the lucrative pneumococcal vaccine market with its purchase of Affinivax for a potential US$ 3.3 billion. Through the deal, the British drugmaker has gained access to the Boston-based biopharma’s 24-valent pneumococcal vaccine candidate, along with its vaccine development technology platform MAPS (Multiple Antigen Presenting System) and other assets. GSK believes the vaccine candidate will help it challenge market leader Pfizer’s blockbuster Prevnar range of vaccines.GSK also paid US$ 1.9 billion for American drug
developer Sierra Oncology and gained access to the latter’s targeted therapies for the treatment of rare forms of cancer. Sierra’s lead candidate momelotinib is being developed to address the unmet medical needs of anemic myelofibrosis patients. GSK believes the drug will work better at treating anemia than the currently approved JAK inhibitors on the market. FDA will decide on the drug’s approval by June 2023.Belgian biopharma UCB paid US$ 1.9 billion for Zogenix, expanding its
portfolio of treatments for specific and rare forms of epilepsy drugs. The
acquisition will help UCB deepen its foothold in the epilepsy market, adding to
its existing line of four products, including Vimpat and Briviact.View Top 100 Pharma & Biotech Deals in 2022 by Deal Size (Free Excel Available) Merck inks deal with Kelun Biotech; Regeneron buys rights to Sanofi’s cancer drugSeveral drugmakers announced
collaborations where milestone payments took precedence over upfront payments.
In one such deal, Merck entered into a
potential US$ 9.3 billion licensing and collaboration agreement with China’s Kelun Biotech that will give it
rights to seven early-stage antibody-drug conjugate candidates against oncology targets. Merck paid a relatively small sum
of US$ 175 million upfront to Kelun as
part of the deal.After partnering with Sanofi for seven years, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals
acquired the global rights to cancer drug Libtayo from the French
drugmaker for an upfront payment of US$ 900 million. Regeneron paid another US$ 100 million to Sanofi after FDA
approved the drug as a first-line treatment for adult patients with advanced
NSCLC (to be administered in combination with platinum-based chemotherapy). As
part of the deal, Sanofi will receive a royalty of 11 percent on worldwide net
sales of Libtayo and will get another potential US$ 100 million in
sales-related milestone payments over the next two years.View Top 100 Pharma & Biotech Deals in 2022 by Deal Size (Free Excel Available) Biocon acquires Viatris’ biosim business; Biogen sells stake in Samsung Bioepis Biocon Biologics, a subsidiary of Indian drugmaker Biocon, acquired US-based Viatris’ biosimilars business for US$ 3.34 billion. The deal expanded Biocon’s biosimilar portfolio of 20 treatments – including 11 that were with Viatris – by adding therapies for treating diabetes, tumors and autoimmune diseases. According to Biocon, Viatris’ biosimilar portfolio is expected to generate over US$ 1 billion in 2023.Samsung Biologics shelled out US$ 2.3 billion to take over partner
Biogen’s stake in Samsung Bioepis, which the duo had
set up in 2012 to develop and manufacture biosimilars. Biogen, however,
retained the commercial rights to both Byooviz (a biosimilar of Novartis’ eye drug Lucentis) and the investigational candidate SB15 (a biosimilar of Regeneron’s Eylea) along with the
biosimilars of Enbrel, Humira and Remicade.View Top 100 Pharma & Biotech Deals in 2022 by Deal Size (Free Excel Available) Our viewGlobally, M&As slowed down substantially across all industries in 2022 as companies confronted challenges such as rising interest rates, a pullback in leveraged finance, bond-market jitters and the possibility of a recession. According to Refinitiv, the total value of deals announced globally fell 37 percent last year — the biggest year-over-year percentage drop since 2001.Going by these statistics, the pharmaceutical industry didn’t fare badly. In its latest ‘Pharmaceutical & life sciences: US Deals 2023 outlook’ report, PricewaterhouseCoopers has predicted a more active 2023, with “M&As to more closely resemble prior years” with a total deal value in the US$ 225 billion to US$ 275 billion range across all sub-sectors.The new year has begun on a
positive note, with three M&A deals worth over US$ 4 billion being announced at last month’s JP Morgan Healthcare Conference. A series of patent expirations are going to put global
prescription sales at risk through 2026. Therefore, it seems plausible that the recent momentum in M&A activities will continue throughout 2023.
Impressions: 4000
Acquisitions and spin-offs dominated headlines in 2019 and the tone was set very early with Bristol-Myers Squibb acquiring
New Jersey-based cancer drug company Celgene in a US$ 74 billion deal announced on
January 3, 2019. After factoring
in debt, the deal value ballooned to about US$ 95 billion, which according
to data compiled by Refinitiv, made it the largest healthcare deal on
record.
In the summer, AbbVie Inc,
which sells the world’s best-selling drug Humira, announced its acquisition of Allergan Plc, known for Botox and other cosmetic
treatments, for US$ 63 billion. While the companies are still awaiting
regulatory approval for their deal, with US$ 49 billion in combined 2019
revenues, the merged entity would rank amongst the biggest in the industry.
View Our Interactive Dashboard on Top drugs by sales in 2019 (Free Excel Available)
The big five by pharmaceutical sales — Pfizer,
Roche, J&J, Novartis and Merck
Pfizer
continued
to lead companies by pharmaceutical sales by reporting annual 2019 revenues of
US$ 51.8 billion, a decrease of US$ 1.9 billion, or 4 percent, compared to
2018. The decline was primarily attributed to the loss of exclusivity of Lyrica in 2019,
which witnessed its sales drop from US$ 5 billion in 2018 to US$ 3.3 billion in
2019.
In 2018, Pfizer’s then incoming CEO Albert Bourla had mentioned that the company did not see the need for any large-scale M&A activity as Pfizer had “the best pipeline” in its history, which needed the company to focus on deploying its capital to keep its pipeline flowing and execute on its drug launches.
Bourla stayed true to his word and barring the acquisition of Array Biopharma for US$ 11.4 billion and a spin-off to merge Upjohn, Pfizer’s off-patent branded and generic established medicines business with
Mylan, there weren’t any other big ticket deals which were announced.
The
Upjohn-Mylan merged entity will be called Viatris and is expected to have 2020
revenues between US$ 19 and US$ 20 billion
and could outpace Teva to
become the largest generic company in the world, in term of revenues.
Novartis, which had
followed Pfizer with the second largest revenues in the pharmaceutical industry
in 2018, reported its first full year earnings after spinning off its Alcon eye
care devices business division that
had US$ 7.15 billion in 2018 sales.
In 2019,
Novartis slipped two spots in the ranking after reporting total sales of US$
47.4 billion and its CEO Vas Narasimhan continued his deal-making spree by buying New
Jersey-headquartered The Medicines Company (MedCo) for US$ 9.7
billion to acquire a late-stage cholesterol-lowering
therapy named inclisiran.
As Takeda Pharmaceutical Co was
busy in 2019 on working to reduce its debt burden incurred due to its US$ 62
billion purchase of Shire Plc, which was announced in 2018, Novartis also purchased
the eye-disease medicine, Xiidra, from the Japanese drugmaker for US$ 5.3 billion.
Novartis’ management also spent a considerable part of 2019 dealing with data-integrity concerns which emerged from its 2018 buyout of AveXis, the
gene-therapy maker Novartis had acquired for US$ 8.7 billion.
The deal gave Novartis rights to Zolgensma,
a novel treatment intended for children less than two years of age with the
most severe form of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). Priced at US$ 2.1 million,
Zolgensma is currently the world’s most expensive drug.
However,
in a shocking announcement, a month after approving the drug, the US Food and
Drug Administration (FDA) issued a press release on
data accuracy issues as the agency was informed by AveXis that
its personnel had manipulated data which
the FDA used to evaluate product comparability and nonclinical (animal)
pharmacology as part of the biologics license application (BLA), which was
submitted and reviewed by the FDA.
With US$
50.0 billion (CHF 48.5 billion) in annual pharmaceutical sales, Swiss drugmaker
Roche came in at number two position in 2019
as its sales grew 11 percent driven by
its multiple sclerosis medicine Ocrevus, haemophilia drug Hemlibra and cancer medicines Tecentriq and Perjeta.
Roche’s newly introduced medicines generated US$ 5.53 billion (CHF 5.4 billion) in growth, helping offset the impact of the competition from biosimilars for its three best-selling drugs MabThera/Rituxan, Herceptin and Avastin.
In late 2019, after months of increased
antitrust scrutiny, Roche completed
its US$ 5.1 billion acquisition of Spark Therapeutics to strengthen its presence in
gene therapy.
Last year, J&J reported almost flat worldwide sales of US$ 82.1 billion. J&J’s pharmaceutical division generated US$ 42.20 billion and its medical devices and consumer health divisions brought in US$ 25.96 billion and US$ 13.89 billion respectively.
Since J&J’s consumer health division sells analgesics, digestive health along with beauty and oral care products, the US$ 5.43 billion in consumer health sales from over-the-counter drugs and women’s health products was only used in our assessment of J&J’s total pharmaceutical revenues. With combined pharmaceutical sales of US$ 47.63 billion, J&J made it to number three on our list.
While the sales of products like Stelara, Darzalex, Imbruvica, Invega Sustenna drove J&J’s pharmaceutical business to grow by 4 percent over 2018, the firm had to contend with generic competition against key revenue contributors Remicade and Zytiga.
US-headquartered Merck, which is known as
MSD (short for Merck Sharp & Dohme) outside the United States and
Canada, is set to significantly move up the rankings next year fueled by its
cancer drug Keytruda, which witnessed a 55
percent increase in sales to US$ 11.1 billion.
Merck reported total revenues of US$ 41.75 billion and also
announced it will spin off its women’s health drugs,
biosimilar drugs and older products to create a new pharmaceutical
company with US$ 6.5 billion in annual revenues.
The firm had anticipated 2020 sales between US$ 48.8 billion and US$ 50.3 billion however this week it announced that the coronavirus pandemic will reduce 2020 sales by more than $2 billion.
View Our Interactive Dashboard on Top drugs by sales in 2019 (Free Excel Available)
Humira holds on to remain world’s best-selling drug
AbbVie’s acquisition of Allergan comes as the firm faces the expiration of patent protection for Humira, which brought in a staggering US$ 19.2 billion in sales last year for
the company. AbbVie has failed to successfully acquire or develop a major new
product to replace the sales generated by its flagship drug.
In 2019, Humira’s US revenues increased 8.6 percent to US$ 14.86 billion while internationally, due
to biosimilar competition, the sales dropped 31.1 percent to US$ 4.30 billion.
Bristol Myers Squibb’s Eliquis, which is also marketed by Pfizer, maintained its number two position
and posted total sales of US$ 12.1 billion, a 23 percent increase over 2018.
While Bristol Myers Squibb’s immunotherapy treatment Opdivo, sold in partnership with Ono in Japan, saw sales increase from US$ 7.57 billion to US$ 8.0 billion, the growth paled in comparison to the US$ 3.9
billion revenue increase of Opdivo’s key immunotherapy competitor Merck’s Keytruda.
Keytruda took the number three spot in drug sales that
previously belonged to Celgene’s Revlimid, which witnessed a sales decline from US$ 9.69 billion to US$ 9.4 billion.
Cancer treatment Imbruvica, which is marketed
by J&J and AbbVie, witnessed a 30 percent increase in sales. With US$ 8.1
billion in 2019 revenues, it took the number five position.
View Our Interactive Dashboard on Top drugs by sales in 2019 (Free Excel Available)
Vaccines – Covid-19 turns competitors into partners
This year has been dominated by the single biggest health emergency in years — the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. As drugs continue to fail to meet expectations, vaccine development has received a lot of attention.
GSK reported the highest vaccine sales of all drugmakers with
total sales of US$ 8.4 billion (GBP 7.16 billion), a significant portion of its
total sales of US$ 41.8 billion (GBP 33.754 billion).
US-based Merck’s vaccine division also reported a significant increase in sales to US$ 8.0 billion and in 2019 received FDA and EU approval to market its Ebola vaccine Ervebo.
This is the first FDA-authorized vaccine against the deadly virus which causes
hemorrhagic fever and spreads from person to person through direct contact with
body fluids.
Pfizer and Sanofi also reported an increase in their vaccine sales to US$ 6.4
billion and US$ 6.2 billion respectively and the Covid-19 pandemic has recently
pushed drugmakers to move faster than ever before and has also converted
competitors into partners.
In a rare move, drug behemoths — Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) —joined hands to develop a vaccine for the novel coronavirus.
The two companies plan to start human trials
in the second half of this year, and if things go right, they will file
for potential approvals by the second half of 2021.
View Our Interactive Dashboard on Top drugs by sales in 2019 (Free Excel Available)
Our view
Covid-19 has brought the world economy to a grinding halt and shifted the global attention to the pharmaceutical industry’s capability to deliver solutions to address this pandemic.
Our compilation shows that vaccines and drugs
for infectious diseases currently form a tiny fraction of the total sales of
pharmaceutical companies and few drugs against infectious diseases rank high on
the sales list.
This could well explain the limited range of
options currently available to fight Covid-19. With the pandemic currently infecting
over 3 million people spread across more than 200 countries, we can safely
conclude that the scenario in 2020 will change substantially. And so should our
compilation of top drugs for the year.
View Our Interactive Dashboard on Top drugs by sales in 2019 (Free Excel Available)
Impressions: 55099